Great Negotiations

by Fredrik Stanton

  Kennedy decided that the UN moratorium plan was unacceptable unless the Soviets agreed to certain provisions, which Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, submitted to U Thant that afternoon: the USSR would have to suspend all arms shipments, halt construction of the missile bases, and immobilize the missiles within forty-eight hours, subject to independent verification before the United States would lift the quarantine. “The existing threat,” President Kennedy wrote in his letter rejecting U Thant’s offer, “was created by the secret introduction of offensive weapons into Cuba and the answer lies in the removal of such weapons.”26

  In Moscow, Khrushchev proposed in a letter to philosopher Bertrand Russell a meeting of the two leaders to resolve the crisis. Kennedy and Khrushchev had met in Vienna four months before, and Kennedy, who by his own account had been bested by the Soviet leader at the summit, which he had described as “the roughest thing in my life,”27 said, “I think it’d be useless.” The president realized the suggestion was a ploy by Khrushchev to buy time until the missiles became operational, and was not inclined to fall into the trap.

  The first test of the quarantine came on Thursday morning, October 25, as the Soviet ship Bucharest neared the quarantine line. President Kennedy wondered, “Are we better off to make this issue come to a head today, or is there some advantage in putting it off till tomorrow?”29 The Americans thought it was unlikely the ship carried contraband, and Kennedy decided to buy time by letting the ship pass after it responded to a hail by an American naval ship. “We don’t want to push him to a precipitous action—give him time to consider,” the president said of Khrushchev. “I don’t want to put him in a corner from which he cannot escape.”30

  The American efforts seemed to be having little effect, and it sunk in that it would take more than a blockade alone to remove the missiles. “As the exhaustive and exhausting deliberations of that long October week went forward,” presidential speechwriter Ted Sorensen wrote, “the limits of time did become more pressing. For all of us knew that, once the missile sites under construction became operational, and capable of responding to any apparent threat or command with a nuclear volley, the President’s options would be drastically changed.”31

  Kennedy wrote to Khrushchev on October 25, “I have received your letter of October 24, and I regret very much that you still do not appear to understand what it is that has moved us in this manner.” He ignored Khrushchev’s offer of a summit and struck a firm tone. He gave a brief and straightforward defense of the American response in light of the deception and false assurances by the Soviet leadership prior to the discovery of the missiles, and concluded, “I ask you to recognize clearly, Mr. Chairman, that it was not I who issued the first challenge in this case, and that in the light of this record these activities in Cuba required the responses I have announced. I repeat my regret that these events should cause a deterioration in our relations. I hope that your Government will take the necessary action to permit a restoration of the earlier situation.”32

  At the United Nations, Stevenson made the American case in a speech that sealed world opinion against the Soviets. Challenging Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin in the Security Council, he declared, “Those weapons must be taken out of Cuba. . . . You, the Soviet Union, have sent these weapons to Cuba. You, the Soviet Union, have created this new danger—not the United States.” In a dramatic face-off, Stevenson put Zorin on the spot under the glare of live television cameras.

  “Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.S.S.R. has placed and is placing medium- and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no? Don’t wait for the translation, yes or no?”

  Zorin responded coldly: “I am not in an American courtroom, sir, and therefore I do not wish to answer a question that is put to me in the fashion in which a prosecutor puts questions. In due course, sir, you will have your answer.”

  “You are in the courtroom of world opinion right now,” Stevenson replied, “and you can answer yes or no. You have denied that they exist, and I want to know whether I have understood you correctly.”

  Zorin said: “Continue with your statement. You will have your answer in due course.”

  Stevenson responded: “I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that’s your decision. And I am also prepared to present the evidence in this room.”

  Stevenson finished by saying: “We know the facts and so do you, sir, and we are ready to talk about them. Our job here is not to score debating points. Our job, Mr. Zorin, is to save the peace. And if you are ready to try, we are.”33

  Meanwhile Khrushchev gathered the Presidium in Moscow at midday on October 25. He told them he saw no further advantage in continuing to trade “caustic remarks”34 with Kennedy, as the president did not appear deterred by Khrushchev’s threats. On the contrary, the information reaching the Kremlin from each of its channels confirmed the likelihood of an invasion of Cuba within the next several days. “Moscow will have to find another way to protect Fidel Castro,”35 he told them. He suggested telling Kennedy, “Give us a pledge not to invade Cuba, and we will remove the missiles,” 36 assuring his Soviet colleagues “by this we will strengthen Cuba”37 and ensure its security. The Presidium unanimously supported Khrushchev’s course, and Khrushchev, seeking to take the heat off the situation, told them, “Comrades, let’s go to the Bolshoi Theater this evening. Our own people as well as foreign eyes will notice, and perhaps it will calm them down.”38 He later conceded, “We were trying to disguise our own anxiety, which was intense.”39

  On Friday morning, October 26, the U.S. Navy successfully stopped and searched its first ship, a Soviet-chartered Panamanian freighter. “We all knew,” Undersecretary of State George Ball wrote, “that at some point soon we would have to stop a ship if our blockade were to be credible, so a Panamanian-owned ship, the Marcula, under Soviet charter, was chosen as the least provocative.”40 The boarding party encountered no resistance, the ship carried no weapons, and the Americans allowed it to continue on to its destination. The relief they felt was tempered by intelligence reporting that work on the missile sites was accelerating.

  That afternoon the KGB station chief in Washington, Alexander Feklisov (known by his codeword “Fomin”), called his friend John Scali, the State Department correspondent for ABC, to meet for lunch. The Soviet agent, who as Julius Rosenberg’s handler had stolen the secrets of the atom bomb from the Americans, warned that, “War seems about to break out. Something must be done to save the situation.”41 After Scali reminded him that the Soviets should have thought of that before placing the missiles in Cuba, Feklisov made a suggestion: “What would you think of a proposal whereby we would promise to remove our missiles under United Nations inspection and Khrushchev would promise never to introduce such offensive weapons into Cuba again? Would the President of the United States be willing to promise publicly not to invade Cuba?”42 Over lunch they formulated a three-part plan to resolve the crisis in which Khrushchev would agree to withdraw the missiles from Cuba under UN auspices, Castro would declare that he agreed never to receive weapons of that kind again, and Kennedy would commit publicly not to invade Cuba. “Why they selected this means of communication,” Robert Kennedy wrote, “was not clear, but an unorthodox procedure of this kind was not unusual for the Soviet Union.”43 When Scali returned and reported his meeting to the State Department, Rusk recognized it as a Soviet trial balloon.

  The Americans were wary of using Feklisov as a channel, but they were encouraged by the news and decided the chance was worth it. “When you are in contact with the KGB,” Rusk noted, “you have to be alert to the question as to whether the KGB is reinforcing the real view of the government in Moscow or whether the KGB is playing a game of some sort.”44 thought the plan was worthwhile and asked Scali to meet with Feklisov again that evening to bring him an official message. In a brief meeting at the Statler Hotel in Washington, Scali told the Soviet agent that he was authorized to say that there were “r
eal possibilities in this proposal” and that “the representatives of the USSR and the United States in New York can work this matter out with U Thant and with each other,”45 although time was short. Feklisov reported on the meeting to Moscow immediately after returning to his office that afternoon, but it did not reach the Kremlin until several days later. On the American side, however, word of the meeting caused tremendous excitement and deeply affected American thinking at this critical time.

  Prompted by the United States, U Thant made a second, more modest proposal, asking the Soviets to stop their ships moving to Cuba for twenty-four hours “to permit discussion of the modalities of a possible agreement,”46 and asking Kennedy to issue instructions “to United States vessels to do everything possible to avoid direct confrontation with Soviet ships in the next few days in order to minimize the risk of any untoward incident.”47 Kennedy answered that if the Soviet ships would “stay away from the interception area for the limited time required for preliminary discussion,”48 U.S. vessels would oblige his request. Khrushchev told U Thant that the Soviets would also agree to his suggestion but warned that their restraint would not last long.

  The wearing pace began to show within Kennedy’s inner circle. “In one sense,” Sorensen wrote, “the urgent pace of those thirteen days helped us all to cope emotionally with the crisis. We were simply too busy to be scared. But I still remember the night when the enormity of the crisis sank in. Looking up at the stars, and remembering the planetarium sky show I had seen several years earlier, I thought about those planets or stars that, at some unknown time in ages past, had been extinguished, blinked out, self-destructed. Were we about to join them?”49

  With the failure of the blockade to remove the missiles and activity continuing on the bases, pressure rose in the White House to attack Cuba. McGeorge Bundy observed, “The blockade, the hawks insisted, had not worked; it had simply allowed the Soviets time to complete the missile emplacement.”50 The Pentagon pressed for an invasion, and Kennedy’s advisers felt a rising need to take active measures to eliminate the threat. The Americans considered three choices: air strike, diplomatic solution, and an intensified blockade. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wondered aloud, “I don’t know what kind of a world we’ll live in after we’ve struck Cuba. How do we stop at that point? I don’t know the answer to this.”51

  On Thursday night, Khrushchev confronted a growing number of reports of an imminent American invasion of Cuba and received disturbing news from the Cuban leadership. In a chilling note, Castro urged the Soviet leader to launch a preemptive, full-scale nuclear strike on the United States if the expected invasion of Cuba took place. He reiterated his point in a private conversation with the Soviet ambassador in Havana. The message met with disbelief in the Kremlin. “When this message was read aloud to us,” Khrushchev wrote, “we sat there in silence, looking at one another for a long time. It became clear at that point that Fidel absolutely did not understand our intentions.”52 Khrushchev decided the time had come to take action to avoid a clash. In a rambling, emotional, twelve-page appeal, he wrote a clash. In a rambling, emotional, twelve-page appeal, he wrote to Kennedy:

  You threaten us with war. But you well know that the very least you would get in response would be what you had given us; you would suffer the same consequences. And that must be clear to us—people invested with authority, trust and responsibility. We must not succumb to light-headedness and petty passions, regardless of whether elections are forthcoming in one country or another. These are all transitory things, but should war indeed break out, it would not be in our power to contain or stop it, for such is the logic of war. I have taken part in two wars, and I know that war ends only when it has rolled through cities and villages, sowing death and destruction everywhere. . . . You may regard us with distrust, but you can at any rate rest assured that we are of sound mind and understand perfectly well that if we launch an offensive against you, you will respond in kind. But you too will get in response whatever you throw at us. And I think you understand that too. . . . If people do not display wisdom, they will eventually reach the point where they will clash, like blind moles, and then mutual annihilation will commence. Let us therefore display statesmanlike wisdom. I propose: we, for our part, will declare that our ships bound for Cuba are not carrying any armaments. You will declare that the United States will not invade Cuba with its troops and will not support any other forces which might intend to invade Cuba. Then the necessity for the presence of our military specialists in Cuba will be obviated. . . . If you have not lost command of yourself and realize clearly what this could lead to, then, Mr. President, you and I should not now pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied a knot of war, because the harder you and I pull, the tighter the knot will become. And a time may come when this knot is tied so tight that the person who tied it is no longer capable of untying it, and then the knot will have to be cut. What that would mean I need not explain to you, because you yourself understand perfectly what dread forces our two countries possess. Therefore, if there is no intention of tightening this knot, thereby dooming the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, let us not only relax the forces straining on the ends of the rope, let us take measures for untying this knot.53

  The message arrived at the State Department Friday evening. Kennedy and his advisers found it encouraging, but wondered whether “the old fellow might be losing his cool in the Kremlin.”54 McNamara thought “it had been dictated by a man who was either drunk or under tremendous stress,” but they decided there had been an important change in Khrushchev’s position, and the shift brought renewed feelings of optimism. “Considered against the background of the Scali incident,” Undersecretary of State George Ball wrote, “the Chairman’s letter seemed to be the break in the clouds we had been waiting for.”55 The letter was “long, meandering, full of polemics,” Sorensen wrote, “but in essence appearing to contain the germ of a reasonable settlement: inasmuch as his missiles were there only to defend Cuba against invasion, he would withdraw the missiles under UN inspection if the U.S. agreed not to invade. Similar talk came the same day in the UN from Zorin to U Thant and, through a highly informal channel, from Counselor of the Soviet Embassy in Washington Alexander Feklisov to the ABC correspondent covering the State Department, John Scali.”56 Rusk worried that this might be a trap to lead the Americans down “the path of talking, talking indefinitely while the missile sites come into full operation, including those in the intermediate range. And then we are nowhere.”57 They were informed the missiles could now be armed in less than eight hours.

  Just as the White House felt a gust of relief, Moscow’s attitude stiffened. On Saturday, Khrushchev sent a second, tougher letter to Kennedy, with no mention of his previous letter, that demanded America withdraw its missiles in Turkey as well as pledge not to invade Cuba. “You are disturbed over Cuba,” Khrushchev wrote. “You say that this disturbs you because it is 90 miles by sea from the coast of the United States of America. But Turkey adjoins us; our sentries patrol back and forth and see each other. Do you consider, then, that you have the right to demand security for your own country and the removal of the weapons you call offensive, but do not accord the same right to us? You have placed destructive missile weapons, which you call offensive, in Turkey, literally next to us.” The Soviet premier then outlined his new offer: “We are willing to remove from Cuba the means which you regard as offensive. We are willing to carry this out and to make this pledge in the United Nations. Your representatives will make a declaration to the effect that the United States, for its part, considering the uneasiness and anxiety of the Soviet State, will remove its analogous means from Turkey. Let us reach agreement as to the period of time needed by you and by us to bring this about. And, after that, persons entrusted by the United Nations Security Council could inspect on the spot the fulfillment of the pledges made.”58

  This sudden change in demands puzzled Kennedy’s advisers. The shift in tone and language sugge
sted confusion and possibly an internal struggle within the Soviet leadership. Bundy saw in the Turkish demand “the ordinary Soviet effort to sweeten any agreement by one last haggle,”59 while Ball wondered whether the Saturday morning letter was “simply a kind of fishing expedition”60 to see if the Soviets could get more than Khrushchev asked for in his previous letter. Khrushchev’s second letter, broadcast in order to shorten communication time, brought a new dimension to the correspondence. The speed of transmission came at a price. Making the letter public marked the end of private negotiation and raised the stakes.

  Ball wrote that the situation on Saturday morning “seemed darkly foreboding.”61 Maybe the Soviet leadership had decided the earlier proposal was too much of a setback for them and decided to go back on it? “How can we negotiate,” McNamara wondered aloud, “with somebody who changes his deal before we even get a chance to reply and announces publicly the deal before we receive it?”62 While Rusk thought Khrushchev had sent out the first letter “without clearance,”63 Bundy, along with most of Kennedy’s advisers, believed that Khrushchev was the author of the message on Friday, but felt that the Saturday morning letter was the result of “his own hard-nosed people overruling him . . . they didn’t like what he said to you last night.” “Nor would I,” added Bundy, “if I were a Soviet hard-nose.”64